Another weekend

another mother related panic.

This time I got a message that she couldn’t change channels on her tv, but not to worry, she’s just watch that one channel she could get, oh and by the way I’m off to put up new curtains.

Cue me frantically trying to persuade her that I would put the curtains up for her and sort out her tv again.

The tv problem was easily evident when I got there. She’s pressed the wrong input select button on her remote. A simple press of the “TV” button enabled channel changes again.

The distance between us is starting to become a real problem in my eyes. There are simple things to sort out, that would be easy if I lived round the corner, but a 90 minute car journey precludes that kind of thing.

The problems of being an only child manifest themselves in a myriad of ways.

She’s really suffering woth gout at the moment too, which means that getting out and about is almost impossible for her. My concerns about her are growing evermore each day.

I really don’t know what the solution is going to be: she won’t contemplate moving closer to us, and I can’t relocate my job, leaving us at a real impasse.

This year, life seems to be dealing me quite a nasty hand, and I’m still non the wiser how to play the hand I’ve been dealt.

The woes of Public Transport

Even though I work in the field I do feel able to criticise it.

Currently out tram network is down, which means I am relegated to the bus network. A trip home that takes 25 minutes on the tram took me 80 minutes last night.

The bus had it’s heater on too, so a muggy day was made a lot worse .

On the positive side I did manage to get my head into a book, so I passed the time usefully rather than tutting at the traffic jams as my  neighbouring passenger did.

It’s only for a month, It’s only for a month may become my new mantra to get me through this.

On another positive note, it may provide me with some interesting blog material: there do seem to be some “interesting” characters around….

Long Weekend

I took a couple of days off last week, primarily to get some quality time in with the kids. Thursday was dreadfully wet, but meant that we had to spend a lot of time finding fun things to do in the house, which wasn’t as much of a challenge as I first feared.

We also went shopping for picnic things, in prepartion for a trip to the Eureka Children’s Museum in Halifax on Friday.

We got up nice and early and headed off to get there for when it opened at 10am, which turned out to be a wise move. The traffic on the way there was nowhere near as bad as I feared, and the weather even seemed to improve in sympathy.

The museum itself is a very hands on affair, with lots of things for the kids to push and pull. getting there early meant we got a good run at amost things before they got too busy.

Whilst we were there I got a rather panicky phone call from Grandma Zilla – her new tv wasn’t working and she was worried about sorting it out.

I tried to get her to switch off at the socket and back on again, but still no improvement. So I asked her to get out the receipt and promised a trip up on the Saturday to sort it out.

It turned out that the power surge protector had tripped out, and a simple click on and off of that sorted everything out! She felt terrible about dragging me all the way up there for that, but as an only child I appreciate that is what I’m there for. If she can’t rely on me, who can she rely on?